I think perhaps our expectations were collectively a bit too high. Does Sochi appear to be a back water shithole from the ugly Soviet days that has no business hosting a low rent bachelor party, let alone an international competition? Absolutely. Should the world have been expecting something better? Absolutely not. Look up Sochi on a Google map. It is down there in the bowels of Russia, just a couple of clicks north west of Georgia. I’ve never been to Georgia but I’ve met a couple of fellows from there and I can tell you this without a shadow of doubt: They’re fucking crazy. We’re talking rat in a tin shit house on a hot day level crazy. When I was in high school, for a brief year an exchange “student” from Georgia ran in our circle. Livan Moukbaniani. I’m unsure if I spelled that correctly but then again I’m unsure if it was even a real name. He came here to drink some beer and drink some beer, and I’m pretty sure he never ran out. Zero interest in “classes” or “learning”. He originally was stationed with an ultra religious family in town. That didn’t work out so well. To avoid the exchange student version of a deportation a much cooler family took him in. They lived to regret that but while under their roof his many hi-jinx began. We never did figure out what exactly his dad back in Georgia did, but through various stories it seemed that he had cornered the local Nike shoe market. I don’t want to go down a long and winding “Man, we were so zany in high school” road during this current topic, but suffice it to say the Winter Olympics have no earthly business taking place a short Soviet Greyhound bus ride from this nation of loose cannons.

I’ve heard a lot of people on the street asking “How in the hell did the Olympics end up in a shithole like Sochi?”. The answer is simple: Vladimir Putin would go to any length, up to and including murdering people in public, to prove out his “Russia is back!” delusion. All votes to determine a host city for the Olympics are for sale. The voting bloc within the IOC is among the most corrupt, contemptible scum we have to offer here on earth. These are the types of people who would willingly send their 13-year-old daughters to a hot tub party at Roman Polanski’s house if there was a free meal at Le Meurice in it for them. A collection of pirates, ne’er do wells, cutthroats and outright scoundrels. I will not say pimps because pimps are more honest about their intentions and there is honor in pimping. Pimps actually work. These assholes are like high-ranking college football bowl chairmen. Such as that one dick they found who chairs something on the Rose Bowl, makes more than a million per year for it, and works approximately 50 hours……per year. If you can get the work by all means, take it. But don’t tell me you make Sundance caliber indie films when we all know damn well you produce scat movies in the shed behind your garage. Essen mein Scheisser! The IOC loves nothing more than to be wined, dined and sixty-nined.

Enter Vlad Putin and the Oligarchs. When the former Soviet Union collapsed in the early 90′s it created a power vacuum. The void was largely filled by gangster types who by force took what they wanted. Many of these men have cornered certain markets or necessities, such as Mikhail Prokhorov who owns the Brooklyn Nets. His fortune now encompasses many goods, namely precious metals. It was founded on acid washed jeans. Yes, Mikhail Prokhorov cornered the Soviet acid washed jeans market shortly after the wall came tumbling down. From acid washed denim to private jets full of beautiful hookers, and there are plenty of other stories just like his. When you “found” one of the thousands of nuclear missiles which were “lost” when the Union dissolved, you command respect. Roman Abramovich, owner of Chelsea Football Club in England is another shining example of what can happen when your country goes Mad Max of sorts, and you have large balls and small to no conscience. Fast forward to the IOC’s host city vote for the 2014 Winter Olympics. Gifts of all sorts are being rained down upon the voting members in every conceivable form. For the ladies we’ve got expensive lunches in Michelin starred restaurants parlayed into an afternoon of shopping spree extravagance that would make Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman jealous. Oh so sorry ma’am, you don’t like those Jimmy Choo boots in that color? Here is the same pair made with endangered black rhino foreskin. For the fellas we’ve got wine-drenched dinners at the same Michelin starred restaurants leading to all-you-can-cum buffets at the very best brothels in the city. All courtesy of Pyeongchang and Salzburg tax payer money. And this is on top of the envelopes of money arriving anonymously at their door. Ol’ Vlad Putin knows how the system works so he goes to a couple of oligarch pals and says “You want tax rate on uranium theft business stay at 0.00%? You make Sochi vote winners or tax rate go to 0.5%”. Even the dumbest of oligarchs know that a one-time grease to some voting officials of 20,000,000 is better than annual tax payments of 0.5% on 50 billion, so they don’t even blink. “Heh voting lady, you vants villa south of France, no monies? Vants some slaves on villa? You haves. Don’t looks under cellar, previous owners dead in dare. Don’t looks in cellar. Here are keys. Ello meester voting man. You likes makes some fuck with 10 year old boy? Wants boy hairless? From Malaysia? Sveeden? You wants hairless Sveedish boy make some fuck with? On yacht in ocean? You haves. If you kills dee boy when you make dah fuck we sends somebodies for dat, good? Okay. We has deal? Sochi vins? Good, we removes dah snipers in case you had said no. HAHA! We sees you in Sochi, you want to make fuck with 11 year old skaters practicing for 2018 Olympics while you veezits, you has.” Bingo-bango, the world watches the most low rent Olympics possible in a half-built city that has been forced to hire dog poisoning death squads to help with the feral dog population which thrives in Sochi.

The Olympics once was a gathering of the greatest athletes to compete and see who was truly the best at running, jumping, throwing, naked oil wrasslin’ with other naked oiled up dudes, and swimming. There was even a time when a black man from Cleveland, Ohio told the Nazis to eat a bag of dicks. Now the Olympics are about getting’ paid bitch. Nothing more, nothing less. It does not matter to the IOC voters if the Olympics is taking place in a city that can reasonably accommodate them, or a city where there aren’t enough manhole covers and the visiting Canadians CAN’T EVEN GET DRUNK ENOUGH IN RUSSIA. What does matter to these human remoras is that they are wearing Jimmy Choo riding boots made of the penis skin of endangered dinosaurs to walk the perimeter of their new villa in Nice, where in the distance of the glittering Mediterranean you can faintly hear what sounds like, but certainly could not be, the wails of buggered hairless Swedish boys. It is The Kardashians concealed beneath a veil of respectability. So kick back and enjoy the splendid grandeur that is Sochi, and get ready for the Summer Olympics 2024 in beautiful Youngstown, Ohio.

I’m unsure why more funding is not funneled into this critical research. It could be the key that turns the lock which opens the door to the mysterious cellar which contains the answer to the question: Who is stupider, men or women? I’m not going to waste pages of cyberspace covering every I.Q. point-melting program each sex enjoys, largely because there are many television shows women love that I wouldn’t be caught dead in the same room with. “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette” to name two. I mean come the fuck on. I’ll focus on the family room within my own home because it is what I know, and things that I don’t know scare me. I wouldn’t recognize a foreign reality show or a Honey Boo Boo if either walked into the room and sat on my face. I am intimately familiar with one female favorite owing to several factors. It occurs on Sunday night and I’m just not in a mentally strong position on Sunday nights owing to the looming Monday work anxiety. My wife has made this a line-in-the-sand issue and beyond this line you do not cross. Lastly for me it is similar to meditation because I can drift off into the ether and lower my heart rate and brain waves to coma levels.

Emily Thorne may look your garden variety hot, young, single billionaire woman with no real explanation for her wealth. But Emily Thorne has a dark secret and an unquenchable, vampire-like thirst for Revenge. She is also a classically trained ninja under the tutelage of one of the great modern Senseis of Japan. Emily bought a luxury estate in the Hamptons in the shadow of Grayson Manor. Was it coincidence that Emily bought the estate within a short beach walk of the first family of the Hamptons? If you think yes, may as well stop reading because you’re an asshole. This is where things become deliciously intriguing and ever so sexy. Aided at all forks and turns in the road by her bisexual, silicon valley titan, fellow multi-billionaire Nolan Ross of NolCorp, he of the fabulous collection of silk fashion scarves and whimsical sport coats (to quote from the Revenge website: “Most notably, Nolan provides assistance to Emily in the areas of electronic surveillance and espionage and keeps Emily’s childhood friend and current secret love, Jack Porter, out of harm’s way……”), they plot their come uppance against the Graysons and their shadowy puppet masters who masterminded the framing of Emily’s father for terrorism and his eventual murder, the father who also served as lovable uncle figure and seed investor in Nolan’s corporate empire. This is serious fucking business. Emily is thwarted at every goddamned turn by her arch nemesis and father’s former lover Victoria Grayson and her scumbag husband Conrad Grayson. Oh how I loathe that Conrad Grayson! Even the plot twists have plot twists in this emotional roller coaster of a clusterfuck television drama. When a fake sibling and new mother dies tragically, a real but long-lost sibling shows up out of the blue to take her place. Just when you think Conrad can’t possibly have another affair and wave it blatantly in Victoria’s face, he fucks the publicist! Emily is marrying Daniel Grayson for Revenge rather than love and Victoria smells a rat. Emily is supposed to get fake shot by Victoria but gets real shot by her newlywed husband Daniel and has real-fake amnesia and Jack Porter is falling in love with the young French media maverick but maybe he kinda likes Emily even though he also kinda hates her and he also might fuck up the entire Revenge plot with his guilty conscience and Jesus Christ on a Bike I’m out of breath! This is not the type of script writing where you wonder if the whole team takes acid to reach this level of creative genius like South Park. The writers on this squad clearly get drunk, down and dirty cheap gin drunk, and start shouting out “What if a ninja runs into the wedding and round-house kicks the bride in the tits!?!?!?!?” And the room erupts into cheers and calls for more gin and tonics. People fucking watch this, I shit you not. They actual factual sit down and turn this on and they hope it never ends. Emily achieving Revenge is like the worst thing that could ever happen because then the wild ride that is the pursuit of Revenge will be over forever.

Like millions of other brilliant men maximizing their free time, I watch fucking sports. Manly sports. Football, basketball, European soccer, 4 hour and 53 minute baseball games in May with a beautiful spring night outside my door and my kid wanting to play with me. Man shit. Sorry sweetpea, I’d love to go outside and ride bicycles but Clay Bucholz is shaking off the signs for the 43rd time. This may well be a fucking slider, we won’t know for another 9 seconds. One thing I’m especially into are college sports. Teams populated by 18-22 year old kids. Kids I have never met playing for a college I didn’t go to (In my defense the college I went to has teams that don’t play in very big games and are on TV rarely, and I grew up in proximity to the school I do root for and have tons of relatives who did go there, and fuck off I don’t need to justify myself to you anyway dick), and I’m dead-balls serious about it. When they lose a meaningless game I’m pissed. When they lose an important game I’m pissed and depressed. When they lose an important game against a team I hate, I’m pissed, I’m depressed, I’m mean to people who are being nice to me, and I let this go on for days. Unlike pissing away an hour of a Sunday night watching someone seek Revenge, I spend valuable, productive hours watching kids who could care less if I live or die play a game for no money and then I let it emotionally influence my life for 24-48 hours after. That is what being a goddamned grown ass man is all about baby. I don’t watch sports; I watch life. I watch others make life happen while I make nothing happen watching them. If that is wrong then I don’t want to be right. The Red Sox win the World Series! I live in Chicago! There are no Red Sox fans near me in Chicago! I’m watching the game in my living room with no other fans! I’m not even drunk! My wife gave me a pity high-five! I have to go to work tomorrow, early! Its the same job I don’t like! I’ve invested nearly 100 hours to the postseason this year! The Red Sox are winners! I watch them win! I’m a winner too, right! Right?

The arguments are laid before you, reader. What is your vote? Which sex watches the more mind-numbing, productivity killing, energy sapping television?

Today I take the first step towards recovery. The road will be long and fraught with peril but armed with the knowledge that I do in fact have a problem, and am not alone, will light my way. It started young; so long ago I barely even remember my first time. I think I was on a family ski vacation and I saw some older teens doing it and I was curious. Just garden variety adolescent curiosity. I wish the story was sexier but I’m not going to tell lies while I come clean with the world. After that vacation it was merely a chippy. I would use mostly on the weekends and occasionally on a week night. Again, my tale being fairly typical, an occasional Thursday night thing became an every Thursday night thing that bled into Wednesday and eventually every other night of the week. Before I knew what was happening I was using during the week days, in the bathroom at school, ducking behind doors for a quick fix. I was spending my allowance on scores and telling my parents I was going to play basketball when really I was headed out to find more. The rest is history. Today I take back control and rewrite the narrative that is my life. It starts right here:

I am a chap-stick addict. I guess technically I’m a lip balm addict because ChapStick is a brand that while I may have become an addict under its tutelage, I’ve moved on since to more serious fixes. I’ve bought all sorts of hits from so many different dealers that they’ve bled together into a kaleidoscope of drugstore scenes in my memory. I’ve done every flavor of ChapStick known to man, squeeze tubes, small tins that you apply with your own dirty finger, and finally I settled the past 5 years on Burt’s Bees. I’m not saying I have done things that I am not proud of in the men’s room of Union Station for some Burt’s Bees, but I’m also not saying that I haven’t. Even when I was unemployed I found ways to make sure that I never ran out of that sweet, medicinal peppermint paste that keeps me going. It was a higher priority than food. I’ve been 6 blocks from home on my way to a scheduled appointment only to turn around and walk home because I realized my pocket was a little light. Better late than be caught out on the street without my Bees. I’ve been known to apply Burt’s Bees twice in the same five-minute conversation with my boss. I started leaving the Bees in my pocket when I went through the TSA scanner at the airport. I couldn’t chance losing it to tipped-over plate or a TSA agent with their own habit. This all led to my Come to Jesus moment. One day as I was dressing for work, putting the Burt’s Bees in my pocket in order of importance: Burt’s Bees, Wallet, Keys, Phone; my two-year old daughter looked up at me, pointing directly at the Burt’s Bees, and said “Daddy, I need some for my lips.” My sweet, innocent daughter with perfectly moist lips wanted to use. She learned it by watching me. I knew then it was time to take a long, hard, cold look in the mirror and decide which man I wanted to see. I choose life.

Why am I starting in the midst of the worst winter of my life instead of humid July? I dunno, masochist I guess. The road is going to be long and the way dark. I’m sure at some point I’ll relapse and use again, but relapse is part of recovery. What matters is that I’ve gotten through today and when it’s over I will be ready to face tomorrow. I’ve decided to go public with my addiction in the hopes that through your love and support I’ll be able to stand here a year from today and see how far I’ve come. Hello, my name is Zach. I’m a chap-stickaholic. For today that is good enough.

I’m fairly well fucked today. Check that, not fairly well fucked but rather fully. I’m in a miniscule life raft, at the epicenter of a Perfect Storm, sharks are circling, and I just found a leak. Basically sitting in the corner wide-eyed and crying, muttering out loud about “There were just too many of them. We couldn’t hold the line. Danny. Danny’s head was in my lap. Just his head. Where did Danny’s body go? Danny? THERE WERE JUST TOO MANY OF THEM GODDAMNIT!!!” I can’t function. I’m pouring water from my glass into my lap. I’m typing into my scarf. I picked up my phone and tried to call a tree. I don’t know whether to shit or go blind.

What caused this post-hurricane wreckage in my person today?

A) Acid?
B) Lobotomy?
C) Family tragedy?
D) None of the above

The answer is D. I walked out the door this morning WITHOUT my daily planner. It just isn’t in my satchel. I’ve looked, many times, despite knowing I left it on the kitchen island and my wife having confirmed as much. What do you do? Yes, I realize my iPhone has at least 69 applications for this but I don’t give a shit. I want to feel the planner in my hand. I want trees to die to get it there. I am comforted by the sight of my beautiful handwriting on cream stock (My cursive is routinely mistaken for a woman’s. In the St. Vincent De Paul handwriting challenges of my youth the last men standing were always Zach and Chrissy. I still maintain my handwriting was superior to Chrissy’s. Sure, she had some chickish accoutrements such as exaggerated loops and theatrical dotting of I’s. But ask someone who wants to get to the heart of the matter whose cursive was superior; ask them off the record. They’re going Zach all the way, I guarangoddamntee it). I haven’t the foggiest what I’m supposed to do today, the weekend, anything. I worked out this morning. I can’t cross it off my to do list for the day until at the earliest 6pm. And that is assuming an on time train departure and being able to successfully side-step my daughter’s hug through the door tonight. As if that isn’t harrowing enough ponder this: What if someone asks if I can do something on some day beyond today? Such as, “Hey Zach, are you able to do beers on Thursday?” Um, how in the FUCK am I supposed to answer that?!?! If I find an old femur bone lying around I’m going to start smashing the shit out of people with it. My daily planner is critical to basic functioning. It is the wellspring from which I flow. Without my planner it is as though I never were. I don’t give a McMutherfuck if I could do the same, easier, on my iPhone. What if a gaggle of rowdy teens steals it on the L train? Then what am I doing late June of this year, genius? Only the teens will know.

Sitting in a dark, wet cave with no flint, no moonlight, no weapon, and I can hear the low growling begin. I just don’t know how hungry it is……..

There is a vast ocean of diet and fitness advice available to the world in any media you desire; most of it is pure, unadulterated shit. Sadly shit is what most seek. There are some who know the truth: You must use The Force if you want to run faster, become stronger, achieve better health and vaporize your fat body gut for good. The Force, much like salvation, lies within. I was not born with speed. Those who know me understand I was not born with size. I posess average strength. Sadly I do, in spades, have the metabolism of a 90 year old woman, sleeping. Luckily I also have a well above-average threshold for mental and physical suffering. That feeling when you are running long and hard and your lungs start to burn and you hurt and want to just shut it down…..that feeling is like a hit of crack for me. I don’t think this makes me cool or in any way superior, maybe just a touch insane. I also harbor a deep-seeded and morbid fear of becoming fat. Perhaps being vertically challenged and losing my hair I realized that to also be fat would doom me to the life of George Costanza. I have been a gym rat for 21 years now. I’ve been many things in those years, some good, often bad, but being in the gym and on the road were anchors through it all. I’ve read so much fucking literature on diet and exercise that I feel an accredited university should at this point award me an honorary doctorate in Exercise and Nutrition Sciences. Because I’ve read widely and experimented exhaustively I have an innate sense for detecting bullshit. For example any diet that says you should crush meat and fat 24/7 and eschew fruit and vegetables, written by an obese guy with heart disease, is bullshit of the highest order. My point is that I don’t fall for fads and eating plans with extremely dubious science behind them. When you spend as much time as I have in gyms over the years you are also exposed to dozens, if not hundreds, of personal trainers. I’ve seen and listened to them all. From the ultra fit trainer I’d like to be to the juice monkey who just wants to lift for free and have a ready market to sell his testosterone derivatives, all the way down to obese pals-for-hire that for the life of me I cannot figure out why someone would pay to tell them what to do in an area they clearly cannot manage themselves. I’ve witnessed the good, the bad and the ugly. Enter Mike Thomson, his wife Angela, and their company Fast & Fit Coaching LLC.

I originally found Mike through my wife, via our neighbor. I wanted to learn how to properly run on my fore to mid foot rather than my heel. That story is fairly boring but suffice it to say that Mike showed me how to use The Force in four sessions. I cured knee and hip pain in four hours with Mike that were previously unfazed by years and years of orthotics, MRI’s and various over-the-counter pills that amounted to a hill of shit. I sought Yoda and Yoda is precisely who I found. Mike does not merely show you how to fitness. Mike helps you to find within yourself the person who can achieve total fitness. Although I’m sure Mike would do whatever you paid him to, he is not the kind of trainer fat lonely gym members hire to watch them go through the motions, never break a sweat, and listen to their incessant whining about their non-existent love life, parents, job or imaginary friends. If this is what you want, again I’m sure Mike would do it, but you should check out GloboGym or equivalent and find yourself a trainer who is also fat. They have plenty of them. I like my trainers to be physically superior to me. Mike competes on the U.S. National Triathlon Team, runs marathons faster than most of you could run a half of one, looks like he eats lead and shits bullets, and waxes eloquent about fitness and nutrition like Matt Damon talks books in Good Will Hunting. His wife Angela, to my understanding, brings a wealth of knowledge on the nutrition side, and is also the Cross Country coach at Chicago Latin School. For those who don’t know Chicago Latin is where people who wipe their asses with $100 bills send their kids, so you know she’s good; not only would they be intolerant of a shitty coach, they might just have them killed. Early this past August I was fortunate enough to spend 55 minutes with both of them in their “office” in the Gold Coast.

I made a joke prior to our meeting to the effect of “Are you going to make me strip down to my underwear and stand on a table while you both circle my fat with a black marker?”. Mike responded with “Yeah, wear something pretty and be ready to talk about your feelings”. So I walk into a very small office space within a gym where I’m meeting Angela basically for the first time. I did not wear my “money” clothes or underwear, I was high body fat, at least for me, and had not done any recent “manscaping”. Within minutes my shirt is off, my shorts are around my ankles, I’m face-down on the floor, and Mike has a pair of pincers taking fat readings from about 15 different places on my body like he’s fit and tying a fucking pig. I almost squealed but had visions of Ned Beatty in Deliverance. He broadcast the measurements to Angela who plugged them into, I don’t know, www.fatpigspreadsheet.com, so they could get a pin-point of my current body fat. Now don’t worry if you are self-conscious. This isn’t something they do to everyone who walks through the door. If you are having flashbacks to sorority hazing in college sending your self esteem into a spiral of alcoholism and high-risk sex, you don’t have to request the body fat calculation. I wanted to know because sometimes you need to see the truth in cold, unforgiving math so your inner swine can no longer lull you into apathy with delusion. Mike and Angela can tell you exactly how and what to eat for your specific body type and goals. They can customize workouts for your goals, regardless if they are to put on 30lbs of lean muscle mass, or run a 5K in under 20 minutes. If you want to go from couch potato to just being able to finish a 5K, they can do that. They can even drill down to the specificity of “Do you want to increase your sex drive?” I think they’ll even come over to your house and throw all the processed pig feed out of your pantry and tell you what you should buy. There are no limits to what Mike and Angela can help you to realize for yourself. Like any nutrition and fitness plan which actually works, you yourself have to, um, work. If you want magic pills and to simply wake up one morning leaner and faster, then I’d probably steer you towards the Internet. If you want to become and remain leaner, learn what your own body responds best to, while also maximizing athletic performance, then I can recommend no better persons than Mike and Angela at Fast and Fit Coaching LLC.

I hate to break it to your garden variety pig, but there is no pill or gimmicky “7 Minute Abs” (Seven chipmunks, swingin’ on a branch, eatin’ lots of sunflowers on my uncle’s ranch. Seven man!) program that is going to achieve long-term success in fat reduction or overall fitness. There is a distinct possibility such options will in fact lead to diminished health. The Fast and Fit Coaching LLC team is not about poor health or unsustainable crash programs. They are about helping people discover their own will to be both fit on the inside and out. They have every answer, they can prescribe any plan. In the end the onus is on the individual to see it through to fruition. As much as that may fucking well suck it is the cold hard truth. If you are swine and know you will never have the will to kill your pig, then oink oink my good man, this Value Meal’s for you! Those who have the will but are lost in the sea of shite and want the righteous path that leads to inner salvation and outward dominance can put their faith unequivocally in Fast and Fit Coaching LLC. I did the latter at the end of this past summer and the results were astonishing. My body fat melted, my daily hour-by-hour energy levels spiked, and I felt better about the plight of African refugee children, in a matter of one month. I was challenging vagrants to bare-chested wrestling matches and screaming at the moon. I started to look like Tom Brady. The short, square, bald, poor version who does not wear Uggs, but still kinda like Tom Brady. It was entirely au natural. Mike does sell some standard supplements and I waved money in front of his face like a drunk sailor in a Bangkok boom-boom bar. He told me I probably didn’t need anything at this point and just go home and start executing the workout and nutrition plan we’d discussed. What kind of shitty drug dealer is this? The kind who doesn’t blow smoke up your fat ass, that’s who. If you want to find a gym to pay your monthly fee and go fuck around on an elliptical machine while you read magazines, talk on your cell phone, or watch TV shows on your iPad so you can tell people you “work out” then by all means, go get it. You want to do your standard meathead chest and biceps workout that hasn’t changed or produced results in 12 years? I won’t stand in your way. For those of you who, like me, are seeking the truth and want your Google search to produce only one perfect hit capable of answering all your questions, try Fast & Fit Coaching LLC. I can make you one guarantee: If disappointed you are, only in yourself will the disappointment be.

Its been a minute since Scout preached. Seasons have changed, snow has fallen, my game is tighter than ever. When I holler at bitches now it will be as fresh as the arctic air which has settled in via this Polar Vortex all the humans are crying about like a bunch of little bitches. I don’t know why we need sexy, scary terms for everything in the Internet age. We used to just call this “Fucking Winter”. But I guess now if it gets cold we need to make it sound like a character from a fucking X-Men movie. Whatevs, trying to rationalize humans is like trying to catch a fart in the wind. What matters is that The Scoutmeister is barking straight up peppermint kisses. At this point it is just unfair to all the other dogs. I’m hot, I have great hair, I’m in the best shape of my life, and now I have fresh breath. Diabolical. If you are any other dog and you see The Scoutmeister pushing up on your bitch, just save muzzle and walk away. It’s over, bandejo. Through no fault of his own, The Ol’ Scouter had what you might call “shit breath”. It was the lone pock mark on what was otherwise a canine Mona Lisa. You should have seen the feigned drama it would incite from my mom. Claims of “clearing out a room” and “offending guests”. Unsure what her expectations were given I rarely take possession of a bone for tartar-scraping, and lack opposable thumbs required for wielding a toothbrush. You try eating two squares of dried fish meal and lick your unit from sun up to sun down every day and tell me how minty fresh your gullet is. So my shitheel parents decide they’re going to spend like 2 million dollars to have Scout gassed and his teeth cleaned (this is why the Terrorists hate us). Can you fuckin’ believe this shit? I’ve got PETA on fucking speed dial at this point. They risked The Scoutmeister’s LIFE to have the tartar scraped off his teeth. What sort of sadistic assholes are we dealing with here? I might have never woken up. Would’ve haunted their shit from now til doomsday.

If you want to kill Scout, come at him like a man. Don’t give him the leg drip nap and creep up on him while he sleeps. That is coward shit. I don’t bite people from behind when they aren’t expecting it. I look you straight in your eye when I bite. That is man shit right there. Not some cowardly, “Oh hey there Ol’ Scouter, wanna go get some treats at the vet’s office, maybe check your weight?”, then stick the night-night drip in my leg while my guard is down. I expect better. Enough about my cowardly parents and their wanton disregard for my life. My mouth feels like one of those Coors Light commercials got glossed over with peppermint. It smells so goddamned good that I want to do it missionary as opposed to doggy style because I don’t want to deny the bitches the enjoyment of my breath. I’m not sure fresh breath is worth the risk of death, but now that I have it may as well put my crisp air to work. Keep an eye out for Scout on the street, I’ll be the one with candy canes flying out of my muzzle when I bark. Been smacking my gums, enjoying the clean Chiclets, 24-7 since they got polished, which my mom fucking HATES. It is so awesome. Sends her into an apoplectic rage every time I do it. I like looking her right in the eyeballs when I do it too, let her know I know. You wanna risk my life over a minor nuisance? Guess what, listen to this gum smack. I make sure to do it once each night as well in the bedroom, sometime between 2am-4am. Because fuck you.

Spend two million dollars to have a dog put under to clean his teeth. Fuckin’ yuppies.

And probably not for the reasons you’re thinking. What shocks me is that they had to spend money voting, and that it is even controversial to begin with. What a colossal waste of resources. A plant grows out of the ground. Some people harvest the flowering portion of it. They smoke it. They get stoned. These people RARELY get hurt. Where’s the fucking problem? The sun shines. Some people sit in it too much. They get skin cancer. These people FREQUENTLY die as a result. This is a fucking problem. Do we criminalize the reaping of the sun’s rays? Just give the government enough time and I’m certain they’ll find a way. The “marijuana is a gateway drug” crowd are assclowns, end of chat. You know what are equivalent gateway potential drugs? Beer, cigarettes, orgasms. I don’t see anyone criminalizing beer because the square crowd deems it acceptable. I haven’t heard any gnashing of teeth to start prosecuting masturbation because eventually some people will die during auto-erotic asphyxiation in an attempt to achieve the ultimate jerking off “high”.

Only losers smoke marijuana and lay around on the sofa eating Cheetos and watching cartoons. Real men get fucked up on whiskey at the bar and kill a family of 5 headed home from the ice rink because he wanted to see if his Camaro could pop wheelies. Get your shit straight, hippy! Smoke your reefer and sing about peace you useless tits while the real fucking men go kill and get killed by random southeast Asians for some nebulous concept like “stopping communism”! Make perfect sense? You are goddamn right it does. Real patriots get drunk and kill shit, sometimes humans. Pussy traitors to their country smoke pot and whine about not killing shit. Look it up, Moon Child.

Before you dismiss me as some spaced out stoner trying to talk his hobby into legality, know that I don’t even smoke weed. No damn good at it. I am rational enough to understand that it isn’t hurting anyone and ruining millions of lives like the legal drugs alcohol and nicotine certainly are. What is typically the worst outcome of a marijuana overdose situation, a fuckin’ large pepperoni pizza? Orange soda isn’t going to drink itself and neither are sober people. A good bell-weather question for people on the fence regarding the dangers of alcohol versus marijuana: If you and you alone were charged with the care of ten 22-year-old men (read: boys) for an entire night, and responsible legally, financially and morally for everything they did during that night, which would you choose; A) They are given an ounce of marijuana or B) They are given two handles of Jack Daniels? Well, what would you prefer? Ordering pizzas and turning out the lights after everyone passes out to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon playing over The Wizard of Oz; Or wrestling car keys from dudes screaming they “are fine”, intervening in fights with strangers, cleaning blood, puke and piss out of carpets, bailing people out of jail, and fielding pleas to “call that fucking guy who sells blow behind the bar!” until 5am? I know which direction I’m going.

Everyone needs to grab their collective sacs, be a goddamned grown up, and stop taking these fucking Facebook quizzes to unearth which fictional character they’d most likely be if fake life became real life and somehow your real life of administrative clerk in a cubicle driving your kids around the suburbs in a minivan was the Star Wars equivalent of “I’m Queen Amidala!” The fuck you are. I’ve seen Star Wars and I’m pretty sure Padme Amidala is an iron-willed bitch working to maintain the peace of an intergalactic star system of miscellaneous species of life forms, banging one of the baddest mutherfuckers in that star system, sexifying vampire chic like you read about, and later having scorching hot lesbo sex with Mila Kunis (yeah, totally different movie, whatever, still one of the biggest game-changer scenes in cinematic history). If in your mind that is essentially the same thing as trying on jeans at Kohl’s, delivering Capri Sun and orange slices to youth league soccer, and having sloppy date night sex with your husband while the kids are trying to psychologically bury their confused horror down the hall…..then I am here to point out the turd, floating, in your punch bowl. Sorry Kelly Johnson, but Padme Amidala you ain’t. You’re probably one of the robots in the background of some random scene, sorting a conveyor belt of spare parts set to be smelted into some other robot. Likely not a cool fighting robot either, but some robot like you that sorts other parts for other boring, mundane parts of life. And that is okay. Eventually something you sort for smelting that also sorts for smelting will result in the smelting of something that maybe works on the assembly line for the company that manufactures light sabers. And then you’ve had a small part in the light saber wielded by Padme Amidala’s Jedi slam piece, which is kinda cool. It is a story for book club (aka get hammered on wine with no kids or husbands around night) at minimum. Probably at maximum. But you’ve got that going for you, and no one can take it away.

“I took the Game of Thrones personality quiz and guess what, I’m Tyrion Lannister!” I’m unsure where to begin here, but suffice it to say you are pretty fucking far from Tyrion Lannister. Let’s cover the most obvious and in-your-face reason that you are not Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones: You’re a fucking idiot. Tyrion possesses an extremely high intellect which enables him to manipulate people to do his bidding and to remain several moves ahead of his opponents in the chess match of power struggle that exists in his world. You have to break out your iPhone and use the calculator app to determine what a 15% tip is on a $100.00 restaurant bill. You told your wife you got home extra late because you and the guys went to Waffle House to sober up after golf, this while she stared at the fresh lipstick and glitter on your collar and smelled the distinct odor of stripper snatch disinfectant wipes emanating from your person. When the cute Brazilian intern working at your company on a visa didn’t understand your attempts to flirt with her in the office kitchen, you responded by speaking Spanish louder. Tyrion is brave and demonstrates giant balls in the face of adversity. You order shots at the bar that have cherry flavored liquor mixed with Red Bull because you think whiskey tastes “burny”. You quit going to the gym altogether because your personal trainer asked you to do some burpees and you thought they were too hard. Earlier in the month you allowed a single girl 12 years your junior to take the leadership role in a work project your boss presumed you would lead, because she was mean. Once a summer you let your father-in-law bump you off the grill, at your house, because he thinks you’re fucking it up. And finally, Tyrion is a dwarf. You are 6 feet tall and have a sloppy, fat body gut that for reasons unbeknownst to all you feel should be adorned in pleated khakis and sweat-wicking golf shirts that frankly do a pretty fucking shitty job of wicking your armpit and under-tit sweat. Tyrion is twice the man at 3’6″ than you are at 6’0″. Hell, his dick’s probably just as big as yours. Tyrion would dominate you and your asshat friends so profoundly at your lame ass poker night that he’d end up winning your house, wife and kids, and would only let you crash in the attic room above the garage because he has a soft spot for losers. But sure, go ahead and let your 400 “friends” know that if we all woke up tomorrow morning in the midst of Game of Thrones, you’d be the intellectual dwarf who bends men thrice his size to his will. It is totally plausible.

When I got strong-armed into joining Facebook it stood for things. It was about trying to get laid using an online medium because you’re too big a pussy to do it up close where people can smell the fear on your breath. It was about people who were as mentally stable as a heated-up atom of uranium having public meltdowns about the guy they were fucking whom they incorrectly presumed was their soul mate. It was people passively-aggressively sniping others from afar because they were too cowardly to confront someone to their face. Now it has degenerated into these embarrassing personality quizzes, regrettable postcard thingy’s where a Donna Reed looking bitch from 1952 makes some sassy quip about how she gets wasted and runs her mouth any time she feels like it, and people who voted for one side or the other of the United States political oligarchy claiming that the other side of the no choice system are idiots. It’s enough to make you want to send a password recovery email so you can log back into your fucking MySpace page.